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Month: June, 2006

Dive #53: La Jolla Cove

29 June, 2006 (12:13) | Dive Reports | No comments

Date & Time	2006-06-29
Visibility	10 - 15 ft.
Max. Depth	37 ft.
Min. Temp	55° F
Bottom Time	28 min.
Air Info	HP 80: 3,170 - 1,760 psi = 23.7 psi/min

UPDATED: Found pics on divebums!

The plan: get up early before work and go diving.
The reason: vis is good at the shores, the cove shouldn’t suck.
The problem: we both forgot Jess’ dive computer at home.
The solution: a quick trip back home and showing up to work a little late.
The dive: FREAKING AWESOME.

After getting our gear squared away (Jess’ BC was leaking a little from the shoulder dump valve) we kicked out for 3 years, finally arriving at the orange buoy. On the way out a smallish pod of dolphins swam between us and the shore. There were two, maybe three. Once at the buoy we descended and immediately saw a bat ray swimming away. Damn.

We proceeded to greet our old friends: calico bass, garibaldi, blacksmith, sheephead, purple urchins and company. Everybody was out to say hello. I think they know to hide during the weekends, because everybody that we usually don’t see on Saturday morning dives was out.

Looking up for some random reason I saw a school of california barracuda swimming in circles above us. There must have been thirty, at least. They were happily swimming in a large circle around our air bubbles perhaps five feet above us.

After poking around for a while we came across a big sheep crab holding breakfast: fresh octopus! Since all the fish in the area know to follow divers for a treat, they all started taking swipes at crabbie’s breakfast. Since he had 4 legs to walk on and 2 to hold breakfast with that left him with 2 big claws to shoo the fish away with. It worked most of the time. A particularly rambunctious sheephead managed to snag a bite. I was so proud
Having thought we found the coolest thing we would for the dive we started heading back towards shore since we were behind schedule. Not 15 seconds later Jess grabbed my fin and I spun around to see TWO of the largest GIANT sea bass I’ve ever come across. 8-OThey were awe inspiring. One was obviously a smallish black GSB (they get gargantuan, he was merely huge) and the other looked to be a full sized white giant sea bass.

UPDATED: Here are two pics of the white one. The first photo was taken by Lisa Munger, the second by Dan Scanderbeg. Both were posted on the Divebums Photos of The Week. The third photo was found via Google Image Search and is of a black sea bass incredibly similar to the one we saw.

The black one was at least four feet long, two feet tall, and at least one foot wide. Its face was covered in copepods, as is common in beasts that large. I waved to it which it acknowledged. I then wiggled my fingers at it, which got much more attention than I had wanted. The four of us just hung out and watched each other for a while, none able to leave the others. Eventually they figured out that we had no plans of feeding them and slowly swam away.

Realizing that there was no possible way the dive could be topped we swam back to shore. Not even sea lions would have made the day any better. Besides, they weren’t out
On the way back in, Jessica snorkeled a bit and saw a HUGE leopard shark hanging out just under the surface. Since I wasn’t close enough, she didn’t get to show me. She also saw some baby fish of some sort that we haven’t seen before. She’ll do some research to find out what kind they are.

Technorati Tags: ocean, SCUBA

Drysuits vs. Wetsuits

25 June, 2006 (18:25) | Diving | No comments

Basically, as the name implies, one keeps you dry and one lets you get wet. There are some trade-offs between the two that explain why most people dive wet.

First let’s get one myth out of the way: wet suits don’t keep you warm by keeping a layer of water next to your skin warm. That’s nonsense. Water is about 23 times more conductive of heat than air. Water will suck the heat right out of your body. Air on the other hand, will do it much more slowly. Nitrogen will do it even slower. When neoprene is created it’s made with tiny nitrogen filled balls. These are then smashed together and made into wet suits (more or less). It’s these little pockets of Nitrogen that keep you warm. Since wet suits aren’t perfectly sealed, some water will get in. This is expected and the wet suit will try to minimize the amount of water that travels over your skin. That’s why a good fit is so important: to minimize the amount of water entering and leaving the suit.

When diving to depths > 30 ft. compression comes in to play. The little Nitrogen bubbles in the neoprene compress as you descend. So that 7mm suit on the surface might only have the insulating power of a 5mm at depth.

Wet suits come in different styles (full, shortie/spring, full with hood, semi-dry) and obviously various colors (though black is best). They also come in different thicknesses. The most common are 8mm, 5mm, 3mm, and sometimes 1mm. These suits are usually thickest in the torso area, and then thinner around the limbs to aid in movement. In San Diego, where the temperature at depths > 50 ft. stay in the mid to low 50°’sF a 7/8mm suit is ideal.

Since they fit snugly, wet suits also don’t create much drag. They also have less maintenance associated with them: just wash them out with fresh water after your swim and you’re all set. Let them dry out and pack them away.

Dry suits on the other hand keep you 95% dry. This is because, unlike wet suits, dry suits have latex (sometimes neoprene) seals around the wrists and neck. These seals are very effective water barriers and will not let water in. This means that, with the exception of your head & hands, the rest of your body stays completely dry.

Within the dry suit family there are two main types: shell & crushed-neoprene. Crushed neoprene are more like wet suits on steroids. They have seals as mentioned, and they’ve been pre-crushed. Because of that, the loss of insulation due to compression that wet suits face, doesn’t affect crushed neoprene dry suits. Crushed neoprene suits are also less expensive since they’re effectively wet suits + seals. They also have better drag characteristics because, like wet suits, they fit very snugly. You normally can get by without insulating undergarments with a crushed neoprene dry suit, since it has some insulating properties of its own.

A shell suit on the other hand is essentially a big plastic baggie with seals around the neck and wrists. This has some benefits: it’s theoretically easier to don/doff because only the seals need to be tight. It can also be made of more abrasion resistant material. It also allows you to wear different undergarments depending on the water temperature. If the water is relatively warm, you can get by with a t-shirt and shorts! And if the water is really cold you can wear these nice fleece pajamas that’ll keep you warm and dry on the surface as well as in the water.

Technorati Tags: ocean, SCUBA

New Lightbox!

24 June, 2006 (19:12) | DIY, Photography | No comments

I’ve decided to make a new light box. The last one I made was constructed easily out of 5 pieces of white foam board, and some masking tape. While it worked, it’s not exactly portable. Plus, it’s pretty fragile. All of these qualities made it suck.

To remedy the situation, I’ll be making a new frame based light box out of PVC. It’s similar in concept to the other ones you maybe seen on the web, but the plans are much more simple.

Equipment

½ inch PVC, at least 20 ft.
4 PVC three-way corners (not tees!) — one end is threaded
4 male slip-to-thread adapters
4 caps
Optionally: 2 small plastic coated hooks

Additional

2 cans Rust-oleum plastic primer
2 cans spray paint
1 can Plasti-dip
Spray paint trigger adapter
masking tape
Fine grained sand paper
String and a well ventilated area

Assembly

Cut 4 legs of equal length
Cut 2 legs of whatever width you want the box to be
Cut 2 legs of whatever depth you want the box to be
Shove the caps on to one end of each leg and the slip-to-thread adapters on the other end
Shove the sides of the box into the corners as needed. It’s easiest to make a square, but you should go crazy.
Test fit everything and make sure you like it: screw the legs into the corners.

Painting

It really helps if you have something you can hang the 5 major pieces off of.

Mask off the female ends of the connectors. Trim up the tape so there’s not too much excess.
Mask off the feet of the legs
Sand everything down, then rinse it off and dry it
Mask off the male ends of the connectors.
Tie some string around the threads of each leg and tie them up for painting.
Tie some string around some part of the square. If you wanted to be tricky you could drill a small hole somewhere, run string through it and tie a knot in the string so it hangs off there. Tie it up for painting
Spray with primer. Make sure you can’t see the natural markings on the PVC. Anything that’s not white now won’t be the right color later.
wait…
Paint with your top coat
remove masking tape, resume hanging, and wait… (you’re probably done for the day)
Mask the bottom of the legs (just above the caps) and dip them in the Plasti-Dip. This will make them pretty grippy and non-skid. Awesome. It’s hard to get an even coat if there’s paint on them, hence the masking earlier.
Optionally: Pick a section to be the back and screw the hooks in.

You now have a pretty (depending on the paint color you chose) light box for your photography projects! I’ll have pictures of mine up in a little while.

Technorati Tags: photography

Dive #52: La Jolla Shores

11 June, 2006 (14:47) | Dive Reports | No comments

Date & Time	2006-06-11
Visibility	10 - 15 ft.
Max. Depth	77 ft.
Min. Temp	54° F
Bottom Time	36 min.
Air Info	HP 80: 3,170 - 1,355 psi = 15.1 psi/min

GRRRRRRRR! Apparently I didn’t get the back cover of my dive computer secured completely — at about 30 ft it started to flood and drain the battery. At about 60 ft I finally noticed. Since I could just barely see the display at that depths, and narcosis was the order of the day, we decided to stay shallow. I probably would have been OK, but this was the safest thing to do.

After getting back to the surface I quickly threw away the old battery and washed the back compartment out with fresh water to get the corrosion out. I put a new battery in and found that I couldn’t really get the back panel on all the way. Somewhere between me getting the case off last night and the depth + pressure today, something got bent and it won’t seal.

Great, now my dive computer has to go off to the manufacturer. I won’t see it again for two to three weeks.

Technorati Tags: ocean, SCUBA

Dive #51: La Jolla Shores

4 June, 2006 (12:44) | Dive Reports | No comments

Date & Time	2006-06-03
Visibility	15 - 20 ft.
Max. Depth	108 ft.
Min. Temp	53° F
Bottom Time	38 min.
Air Info	HP 80: 2,940 - 1,060 psi = 11.6 psi/min

This was our first of two dives for our “deep diver” certification. We took this class with our open water instructor Steve. Since he hasn’t been diving with us in a while (busy guy) we didn’t go straight down to 130 ft. He wasn’t too comfortable with how hard we’d breath and since our tanks weren’t full we wouldn’t have very much time at that depth.

The dive was relatively fun. Jess says she got narc’d pretty bad. I got really confused and had a hard time keeping track of both Jess and Steve. I’m sure the depth didn’t help. I don’t remember to much about this dive because I’m logging it so late after it happened. My dive computer did flash the battery light at me, so I’ll replace that before our next deep dive.

Gundam!

1 June, 2006 (14:47) | Photography | No comments

On Monday Jessica and I finished the Gundam we’d been working on. Last night I took some photos of it in our home made light box. Not five minutes after downloading the photos, Jessica has picked one out to be wallpapper! Awesome! As she makes more I’ll put them up.

UPDATE: If anybody was wondering this is Perfect Grade W-GUNDAM Zero Custom NEW MOBILE REPORT GUNDAM WING Endless Waltz

Technorati Tags: photography

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